[26]
It sometimes misleads perhaps, but none the less in most cases it
guides us to the truth. For this same conjectural
divination is the product of boundless eternity and
within that period it has grown into an art through
the repeated observation and recording of almost
countless instances in which the same results have
been preceded by the same signs.
15. "Indeed how trustworthy were the auspices
taken when you were augur!1 At the present
time—pray pardon me for saying so—Roman augurs
neglect auspices, although the Cilicians, Pamphylians,
Pisidians, and Lycians hold them in high esteem.
I need not remind you of that most famous and
worthy man, our guest-friend, King Deiotarus, who
never undertook any enterprise without first taking
the auspices. On one occasion after he had set
out on a journey for which he had made careful
plans beforehand, he returned home because of the
warning given him by the flight of an eagle. The
room in which he would have been staying, had he
continued on his road, collapsed the very next
[p. 255]
night.
1 Cicero was elected to the college and became a colleague of Pompey and Hortensius in 53 B.C. Quintus proceeds now to contrast the state of augury in 53–63 B.C. with that of the time of the dialogue, 44.
Cicero: De Senectute De Amicitia De Divinatione. With An English Translation. William Armistead Falconer. Cambridge. Harvard University Press; Cambridge, Mass., London, England. 1923.
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